One of the starting points of my interest in the possible linkages between Sufism and commercial culture was Sultan Veled’s couplet on how the soul becomes ‘a city, a market, a shop‘. Sufism is a thoroughly urban, cosmopolitan phenomenon – The notion that Sufism is a mere expression of rural “folk” Islam is a myth, ...

70 years ago today, Nazi “judge” Roland Freisler sentenced to death three members of the Christian resistance group Weiße Rose: Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst. Together with the other members of the group (among them Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, and Alexander Schmorell who were murdered after trials later in the same year, 1943) ...

It’s Red Nose Day again soon – which comes as a reminder of just how closely the quasi-religious culture of celebrity and consumer sainthood and the discourse of humanitarianism and human rights are interlinked (see Goodman 2009). In an earlier post I have suggested that we can see the discourse of human rights as quasi-theological ...

When talking about a “Sufi ethics” which can be seen as impacting on more than just the committed practitioners, i.e. members of Sufi orders and individual wandering dervishes, one can’t get round Ibn al-Husayn as-Sulami’s collection of moral rules in what has been translated as The Book of Sufi Chivalry, (al Sulami 1983)the 312/1021 written ...

Among proponents of post-humanism, of an “ontological turn” in the social sciences, anti-representationalism and what-have-you it is popular to put down humanism as “Western rationalism”. That makes reference to “Eastern thought” attractive. I leave aside the obvious observation that such reference is a bit of a poisoned compliment sent right down the compass – as ...

Here is why http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/4445811.stm http://www.soundportraits.org/on-air/bergen-belsen/audio.php … and in order to remain vigilant – antisemitism is not a thing of the past, but, as Robert Fine reminds us in the latest issue of the European Sociologist (p.4), is often mistaken as such even by those who should be most aware of these things (i.e. us sociologists) One ...

“Timbuktu has often been invoked as a symbol of the most distant place on Earth, as a mysterious and exotic, but unreachable, attraction. Yet, it is a real city with a history.” update only three hours after putting this up news is in that the Ahmad Baba library has been burned down http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2013/jan/28/ahmed-baba-library-torched-islamist-pictures ...

anti immigration attitudes are on a new high – according YouGov figures reported on Liberal Conspiracy – but, according to research by British Future, never before were people so “comfortable” with “mixed-race” partnerships (also reported on Liberal Conspiracy) This leaves me slightly nervous, but also optimistic: attitudes relating to family life tend to be more stable and ...